News
F5 Plays Key Role in Swisscom’s ‘Internet For Schools’ Initiative
March 2010 by Marc Jacob
F5 Networks, Inc. announced that Swisscom, Switzerland’s leading telecommunications provider, has implemented F5 solutions to support its nationwide ‘Internet for Schools’ initiative.
The ‘Internet for Schools’ program is aimed at getting every primary and secondary school in Switzerland connected to the internet. Swisscom leads the project, in conjunction with federal and local authorities. With over 5000 schools to support, and a potential user base of 900,000, key aspects of the project included stability, performance and reliability. Flexibility was also important given differing policies from canton (region) to canton on web content preferences.
The systems house eXecure recommended the F5® BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™, running on a mix of hardware platforms including F5’s carrier-grade VIPRION® chassis and blade system, as the best-in-class solution for these needs.
“This is something of a flagship project, given its extent,” said Martin Theiler, Project Management and Engineering, Swisscom, “Since the implementation was concluded, the system has been running smoothly and is extremely stable. It’s exactly right for our requirements, and we’re particularly impressed with VIPRION’s reliability and scalability, which enable us to increase processing power whenever we need to simply by adding an extra blade.”
“The system Swisscom, eXecure, and F5 developed is one of Switzerland’s largest centralized web access and security initiatives,” said Rolf Schauder, Regional Director for Central and Eastern Europe at F5. “The ability of F5 devices to interoperate with other security providers to allow for different levels of URL filtering per canton was a particularly noteworthy achievement. The solution we put in place, unique at the time in Switzerland, is applicable to service providers, governing bodies and the like on a global basis.”
